Dude. No Really. Dude.
So, I think I'm squeeing in several different intonations, and I don't know if anybody would even bother to have a look at ten different ones for EACH episode, so I think I'm going to just have to squee.
Keep in mind that I was watching this with both my parents, who are reaching their 60s, extremely catholic, and I think my father's got a bit of a man-crush on Barrowman. I think. My mother, on the other hand, has never seen an episode of Torchwood before, and picked perhaps the WORST time to start watching with us. We think it's because of the Diamond earrings we gave her today, but It could be because she had a bit too much irish coffee.
Spoilers for TW 1x12 and 1x13.
TW 1x12- Capitan Jack Harkness
I think this has to be one of my favorite episodes, by far, because it actually works as a bridge between the season and the finale and does it by solely relying on Toshiko, who's pretty much like the pea green cars you count on a road trip to pass the time while driving through Kentucky, and Jack, whom seems to play second fiddle to Gwen's quest to be everybody's BFF and thus relate the most to the viewer.
But Jack's secrets are out, and he finds Alterna-harkness extremely sexy (my mother agreed and we chalked it up to the liquor talking), and Toshiko's still plain old Toshiko, but it's like that one day when you're passing through Washington state and it just so happens that you see fifty million pea green cars and the hip-hop station's playing Berlioz as a practical joke. Her dress is awkward, but she is, too, and so it doesn't really matter in the end, does it? I love the math equation going on throughout the whole ordeal. Jack's off falling in love and Toshiko's putting together a way to tear the space-time continuum a new asshole, and it somehow seems very fitting for the two of them. Jack doesn't think of her as his woman, and she's worried because, hello, Japanese woman in a room full of white people before the Cardiff blitz? Though I suppose it would be different if they got slingshot to San Francisco, I'd be worried whether or not that cheeky woman in the back confronted me about it.
I love the thought of Jack and Toshiko stuck in the 40's (or any other time period, for that matter) together because they don't seem very sexual, but they do have an air of support between the two of them. If they ever did do it (as you kids like to call it these days), it would be one of those things where Jack knows he's not drunk and Toshiko's been nursing the same lemon drop martini all night, but they carefully don't tell each other until she's sleepy and he's already made the two of them come, and then spend the rest of the night getting rightfully sauced and joking about how he grunts like a hyena in bed or how she called him Mary while he was eating her out. (Or the kind of people who deny themselves of mutual attraction until they're watching a movie and then BOOM, 'what was that movie about, again? I was too busy giving you a handjob.' You know, the Christmas party shenanigans of fashionable bisexuals. Which, I must say, is a title that will certainly have to be used if I ever write more than a hundred words on the two of them) He wants to be stuck in this time, but he says he won't throw her to the wolves if he gets his way, and I'm kind of inclined to believe him. She's his responsibility, he knows because he carted her ass there, and he knows that's a pretty big deal after their little spat about Janet the weevil. And the ending? The ending the two of them faced was perfect; she'd keep his secrets, presumably the same way she kept it with the pendant, and things settle back into a natural pace between them.
If you'll allow me to turn into a rabid fangirl for a minute, OMG Owen and Ianto 4eva u GUYZ. End of story. Not OTP, but They'd just harp each other to death and angst about their lost loves and yell at each other about who's the boss and Jack and Gwen and all that other shit and it would be completely and utterly fine with me, as it seems both of them have decided to grow balls, and perhaps costume options. Rawr. And they really should give Ianto a gun more often.
My father freaked out about the kiss, seeing as there was no debate as to whether or not it was meant to be the kiss of life, as it had been the last time Jack stuck his tongue in someone's mouth, but there was no spit-take, and my mother just kinda sat there and wondered how we were both casual about seeing it happen. My father can now flail on cue whenever I say the word 'stopwatch', and it's all very Pavlovian, nowadays. Nonetheless, I think we all decided that after making out with someone who steals your name and knows you'll die tomorrow, it's a bad idea to salute. Very bad idea indeed. Stand there breathlessly, ask if he'll ever come back, do that whole harlequin thing that Jack's storyline had this time (Which, OMG, refreshing. Not the playful!Jack the show has desperately needed, but at least we see the angst of Jack's character in some other arena than life and death for the whole time). Just...saluting after something that emotional seemed stupid to everybody in the room.
TW 1x13- End of Days BEST FINALE EVER.
You want to talk about economy of movement? take a look at Chinball's Economy of movement in this shit. I want a copy of the fucking screenplay I'm so impressed with how much he crammed into it. I don't even remember everything or the order of everything and look at the list I've already started accounting for.
- Rift opened
- Old dude looking creepy
- BLACK FUCKING DEATH
- Toshiko pouring it on with the Japanese while talking with her mother
- Gladiator!sex jokes with Jack
- Jack holds old dude at gunpoint, and gets a dose of old school bad special effects from Doctor Who's past
- Lisa shows up again
- Old guy shows Gwen's Rhys Dead
- Gwen Kidnaps Rhys
- Ianto doing the whole weevil!control thing
- They run a lot
- Jack blames Owen for EVERYTHING.
- Jack accuses Owen and Gwen of sleeping together and making it sound like angst about how he never got to smack that.
- Jack Fires Owen after Owen accuses him of wanting to be stuck back in the 40s and not being a solid leader.
- Old guy stabs Rhys twice like he's about to say 'E tu Brute?'
- Toshiko, Ianto, and Gwen stand around looking awkward and lopsided after Jack Fires Owen
- RETCON ANGST. FINALLY.
- Toshiko and Ianto stand around looking guilty as Rhys lays out dead
- Gwen and Jack going from attack of the beast to Where's my fucking kleenex? and it worked really well for the two of them
- All of them turning against Jack, opening the rift and letting out Godzilla or whatever that thing was called.
- Jack recounting the season and actually making it seem like most of the character episodes were there for, you know, a reason.
- Dead people lying on Cardiff streets.
- Jack getting shot. In the FACE. Again! Then in the heart but that's a bit of a side venture. The Dick Cheney is the one that matters, yo.
- Jack not getting back up conveniently.
- Retinal eye scans
- Zombie!Barrowman. Which needs more face-time in the second season.
- Running.
- Exploding conference rooms.
- CGI monster of DOOM
- Jack sacrificing himself and actually Dying. Dying needs a capital because he doesn't instantly wake up and they actually put death!makeup on him and he's in the morgue and shit, although I wonder if he smelt, because you usually don't get so quick to shove dead people in the morgue unless you don't want to deal with the angst and pain of proper burial procedures, or they reek.
- MORE zombie!Barrowman. Which, I'm stressing to you, honestly needs more facetime in the second season.
- Gwen finding Rhys alright, and then telling him to go to sleep because when he gets back she's gonna fuck his eyeballs out.
- Gwen staying in the morgue with Z!B for a whole freaking DAY.
- Ianto crying into Jack's Jacket.
- Owen looking like he didn't honestly MEAN to be a douche this time.
- REVERSE GENDER SLEEPING BEAUTY SYNDROME OF DOOM. Which I really disdain, somewhat, because I think this is when it should have ended, especially since they got a second season but completely ignoring the fact that Jack's showing up a few times in Doctor Who Series three. I also disdain it because I honestly dislike Gwen. I care about her as a character, but I think she's a git who, again, wants to be everybody's BFF. It makes sense that she would finally awaken Z!B with a kiss, but dude, again. This is like when Toshiko got groped in the woods. It should have, and very well would have worked better, if someone outside of the main pairing got a crack at hanging out with the dead Hark and accidentally waking the bitch up.
- Toshiko freaking out and jumping Jack.
- Ianto getting the kiss heard around the world five weeks before it was supposed to.
- Owen being forgiven
- Jack reinforcing the fact that he needs the doctor
- Hand lighting up.
- Jack disappearing. (OMG BACK WITH THE DOCTOR, WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN AND WHY CAN'T I KNOW RIGHT NOW?!)
ALL in 50 minutes or less? Dude, my pizza doesn't even come that quickly anymore, and I only ask for pepperoni, not zombies and CGI monsters and gender reversal and welsh accents. Come to think of it, I'll ask them next time I order a pizza to put all that shit on there and see how long it takes.
There were tears and OH SNAP moments and my father completely can't get over the special hell that is Jack and Ianto, but he's learning to accept it at least, and I can't think of a better ending to a season. The only problem I have with the whole thing is the fact that Chinball or whatever his name was pulled all of this out of his ass for the last freaking episode. He could have been honest to god setting this up better all along, which, you know, would have been even more awesome and made the finale even more awesome, but I guess it's awesome enough as it stands.
I suppose the last few episodes, from TW 1x10 on were meant to be the attention getters, as they would otherwise be swept away in the tide of holiday programming. I think this is also the reason why People get winter programming breaks in the US. Still can't account for commercials about toothpaste and enemas in the middle of Supernatural, though.
My mother, however, wanted a full explanation of everything after we were done. Flow Charts and Venn Diagrams were involved and she just stopped, shrugged and went, 'oh-kay, so wasn't that guy *points to Jack* naked the last time I saw him on Doctor Who', and that just opened a whole other can of worms.
Like, really, guys. That was fuckin' recackulous. It was so out of the box that it needs a vowel shift AND a Rhode Island accent. In-fucking-sane, and I can't wait to watch it again.
Keep in mind that I was watching this with both my parents, who are reaching their 60s, extremely catholic, and I think my father's got a bit of a man-crush on Barrowman. I think. My mother, on the other hand, has never seen an episode of Torchwood before, and picked perhaps the WORST time to start watching with us. We think it's because of the Diamond earrings we gave her today, but It could be because she had a bit too much irish coffee.
Spoilers for TW 1x12 and 1x13.
TW 1x12- Capitan Jack Harkness
I think this has to be one of my favorite episodes, by far, because it actually works as a bridge between the season and the finale and does it by solely relying on Toshiko, who's pretty much like the pea green cars you count on a road trip to pass the time while driving through Kentucky, and Jack, whom seems to play second fiddle to Gwen's quest to be everybody's BFF and thus relate the most to the viewer.
But Jack's secrets are out, and he finds Alterna-harkness extremely sexy (my mother agreed and we chalked it up to the liquor talking), and Toshiko's still plain old Toshiko, but it's like that one day when you're passing through Washington state and it just so happens that you see fifty million pea green cars and the hip-hop station's playing Berlioz as a practical joke. Her dress is awkward, but she is, too, and so it doesn't really matter in the end, does it? I love the math equation going on throughout the whole ordeal. Jack's off falling in love and Toshiko's putting together a way to tear the space-time continuum a new asshole, and it somehow seems very fitting for the two of them. Jack doesn't think of her as his woman, and she's worried because, hello, Japanese woman in a room full of white people before the Cardiff blitz? Though I suppose it would be different if they got slingshot to San Francisco, I'd be worried whether or not that cheeky woman in the back confronted me about it.
I love the thought of Jack and Toshiko stuck in the 40's (or any other time period, for that matter) together because they don't seem very sexual, but they do have an air of support between the two of them. If they ever did do it (as you kids like to call it these days), it would be one of those things where Jack knows he's not drunk and Toshiko's been nursing the same lemon drop martini all night, but they carefully don't tell each other until she's sleepy and he's already made the two of them come, and then spend the rest of the night getting rightfully sauced and joking about how he grunts like a hyena in bed or how she called him Mary while he was eating her out. (Or the kind of people who deny themselves of mutual attraction until they're watching a movie and then BOOM, 'what was that movie about, again? I was too busy giving you a handjob.' You know, the Christmas party shenanigans of fashionable bisexuals. Which, I must say, is a title that will certainly have to be used if I ever write more than a hundred words on the two of them) He wants to be stuck in this time, but he says he won't throw her to the wolves if he gets his way, and I'm kind of inclined to believe him. She's his responsibility, he knows because he carted her ass there, and he knows that's a pretty big deal after their little spat about Janet the weevil. And the ending? The ending the two of them faced was perfect; she'd keep his secrets, presumably the same way she kept it with the pendant, and things settle back into a natural pace between them.
If you'll allow me to turn into a rabid fangirl for a minute, OMG Owen and Ianto 4eva u GUYZ. End of story. Not OTP, but They'd just harp each other to death and angst about their lost loves and yell at each other about who's the boss and Jack and Gwen and all that other shit and it would be completely and utterly fine with me, as it seems both of them have decided to grow balls, and perhaps costume options. Rawr. And they really should give Ianto a gun more often.
My father freaked out about the kiss, seeing as there was no debate as to whether or not it was meant to be the kiss of life, as it had been the last time Jack stuck his tongue in someone's mouth, but there was no spit-take, and my mother just kinda sat there and wondered how we were both casual about seeing it happen. My father can now flail on cue whenever I say the word 'stopwatch', and it's all very Pavlovian, nowadays. Nonetheless, I think we all decided that after making out with someone who steals your name and knows you'll die tomorrow, it's a bad idea to salute. Very bad idea indeed. Stand there breathlessly, ask if he'll ever come back, do that whole harlequin thing that Jack's storyline had this time (Which, OMG, refreshing. Not the playful!Jack the show has desperately needed, but at least we see the angst of Jack's character in some other arena than life and death for the whole time). Just...saluting after something that emotional seemed stupid to everybody in the room.
TW 1x13- End of Days BEST FINALE EVER.
You want to talk about economy of movement? take a look at Chinball's Economy of movement in this shit. I want a copy of the fucking screenplay I'm so impressed with how much he crammed into it. I don't even remember everything or the order of everything and look at the list I've already started accounting for.
- Rift opened
- Old dude looking creepy
- BLACK FUCKING DEATH
- Toshiko pouring it on with the Japanese while talking with her mother
- Gladiator!sex jokes with Jack
- Jack holds old dude at gunpoint, and gets a dose of old school bad special effects from Doctor Who's past
- Lisa shows up again
- Old guy shows Gwen's Rhys Dead
- Gwen Kidnaps Rhys
- Ianto doing the whole weevil!control thing
- They run a lot
- Jack blames Owen for EVERYTHING.
- Jack accuses Owen and Gwen of sleeping together and making it sound like angst about how he never got to smack that.
- Jack Fires Owen after Owen accuses him of wanting to be stuck back in the 40s and not being a solid leader.
- Old guy stabs Rhys twice like he's about to say 'E tu Brute?'
- Toshiko, Ianto, and Gwen stand around looking awkward and lopsided after Jack Fires Owen
- RETCON ANGST. FINALLY.
- Toshiko and Ianto stand around looking guilty as Rhys lays out dead
- Gwen and Jack going from attack of the beast to Where's my fucking kleenex? and it worked really well for the two of them
- All of them turning against Jack, opening the rift and letting out Godzilla or whatever that thing was called.
- Jack recounting the season and actually making it seem like most of the character episodes were there for, you know, a reason.
- Dead people lying on Cardiff streets.
- Jack getting shot. In the FACE. Again! Then in the heart but that's a bit of a side venture. The Dick Cheney is the one that matters, yo.
- Jack not getting back up conveniently.
- Retinal eye scans
- Zombie!Barrowman. Which needs more face-time in the second season.
- Running.
- Exploding conference rooms.
- CGI monster of DOOM
- Jack sacrificing himself and actually Dying. Dying needs a capital because he doesn't instantly wake up and they actually put death!makeup on him and he's in the morgue and shit, although I wonder if he smelt, because you usually don't get so quick to shove dead people in the morgue unless you don't want to deal with the angst and pain of proper burial procedures, or they reek.
- MORE zombie!Barrowman. Which, I'm stressing to you, honestly needs more facetime in the second season.
- Gwen finding Rhys alright, and then telling him to go to sleep because when he gets back she's gonna fuck his eyeballs out.
- Gwen staying in the morgue with Z!B for a whole freaking DAY.
- Ianto crying into Jack's Jacket.
- Owen looking like he didn't honestly MEAN to be a douche this time.
- REVERSE GENDER SLEEPING BEAUTY SYNDROME OF DOOM. Which I really disdain, somewhat, because I think this is when it should have ended, especially since they got a second season but completely ignoring the fact that Jack's showing up a few times in Doctor Who Series three. I also disdain it because I honestly dislike Gwen. I care about her as a character, but I think she's a git who, again, wants to be everybody's BFF. It makes sense that she would finally awaken Z!B with a kiss, but dude, again. This is like when Toshiko got groped in the woods. It should have, and very well would have worked better, if someone outside of the main pairing got a crack at hanging out with the dead Hark and accidentally waking the bitch up.
- Toshiko freaking out and jumping Jack.
- Ianto getting the kiss heard around the world five weeks before it was supposed to.
- Owen being forgiven
- Jack reinforcing the fact that he needs the doctor
- Hand lighting up.
- Jack disappearing. (OMG BACK WITH THE DOCTOR, WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN AND WHY CAN'T I KNOW RIGHT NOW?!)
ALL in 50 minutes or less? Dude, my pizza doesn't even come that quickly anymore, and I only ask for pepperoni, not zombies and CGI monsters and gender reversal and welsh accents. Come to think of it, I'll ask them next time I order a pizza to put all that shit on there and see how long it takes.
There were tears and OH SNAP moments and my father completely can't get over the special hell that is Jack and Ianto, but he's learning to accept it at least, and I can't think of a better ending to a season. The only problem I have with the whole thing is the fact that Chinball or whatever his name was pulled all of this out of his ass for the last freaking episode. He could have been honest to god setting this up better all along, which, you know, would have been even more awesome and made the finale even more awesome, but I guess it's awesome enough as it stands.
I suppose the last few episodes, from TW 1x10 on were meant to be the attention getters, as they would otherwise be swept away in the tide of holiday programming. I think this is also the reason why People get winter programming breaks in the US. Still can't account for commercials about toothpaste and enemas in the middle of Supernatural, though.
My mother, however, wanted a full explanation of everything after we were done. Flow Charts and Venn Diagrams were involved and she just stopped, shrugged and went, 'oh-kay, so wasn't that guy *points to Jack* naked the last time I saw him on Doctor Who', and that just opened a whole other can of worms.
Like, really, guys. That was fuckin' recackulous. It was so out of the box that it needs a vowel shift AND a Rhode Island accent. In-fucking-sane, and I can't wait to watch it again.